Finity (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In Finity, John Barnes starts with the premise that Hitler won World War II, but that's not the only curious thing that's going on in his world. Earth in 2063 is filled with intelligent cars and personal ballistic transports, but the United States has vanished from humanity's collective memory. Like everyone else, Lyle Peripart isn't even aware that he's forgotten about the U.S., until the enigmatic tycoon Geoffrey Iphwin offers him a job and tries to bring it up in conversation. Iphwin thinks that Lyle's specialty, abductive reasoning, might be the key to solving the mystery, and he's not alone.

Lyle soon finds himself observed by strange Nazi spies and the target of several murder attempts, but he also discovers some unexpected aces in his sleeve: his fiancée turns into a deadly pistoleer when needed, though she doesn't seem to remember it! And he suddenly finds himself in possession of a cat named Fluffy. While Finity isn't Barnes' best effort, it's an intriguing and entertaining "What if?" adventure that keeps the action coming and the pages turning. --Craig E. Engler

From Publishers Weekly

Have you ever had a clear memory of an event that was directly at odds with what someone else remembers? Have you and your spouse ever argued over where you first met or when you first kissed? In this latest novel by the Hugo- and Nebula-nominated author of Earth Made of Glass and Mother of Storms, conflicting memories abound, because here there are millions, perhaps billions of alternate universes, each only slightly different from those that lie closest to it. Throughout history, it seems, people have tended to slip back and forth between adjacent universes. Now, however, the slippage is drastically increasing. A young woman calls home and, halfway through the call, discovers that her mother no longer knows her. When she leaves the phone booth, the entire history of the world has changed radically. An astronomer on a job interview spends the day with a mysterious billionaire before meeting his historian girlfriend for dinner, only to find that she believes that she's spent much of the day with him. At the restaurant someone attempts to murder the astronomer, but his girlfriend, suddenly transformed into a gun-toting secret agent, shoots the attacker. At least that's how he remembers it, but the body on the floor isn't the person he saw shot. Barnes has great fun fooling around with a variety of unexpected alternate universes in this clever scientific adventure novel. Occasionally the momentum slows as various characters explain the physics behind what's going on, but in general this is a well-paced book, full of nicely drawn characters and a number of tantalizing mysteries that should greatly appeal to fans of alternate historical fiction.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 303 pages
• Publisher: Nelsonword Publishing Group; 1st edition (March 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312861184
• ISBN-13: 978-0312861186
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,336,026 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #27 in

  Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Authors, A-Z > ( B ) > Barnes, John

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars "A novel of many weaknesses", September 9, 2006

By	doomsdayer520 (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Finity (Mass Market Paperback)

I am not new to John Barnes and I have greatly enjoyed his other books that I've read. That's what makes this one a real disappointment. Here there are some good general ideas but with atrocious writing, weak characters, and a plot structure that is surprisingly amateurish for an established author. The story concerns the trusty sci-fi concept of infinite worlds branching off from each other whenever someone makes a decision, and here those infinite realities are coming back together in calamitous ways. Barnes' concept for why this is happening, involving future uses of quantum technology, is actually very creative and based on real science. But beyond that serviceable basic concept, this novel is mostly a failure. The collapsing realities merely take the form of completely typical alternate histories - conceptions that any beginning author would come up with - as Barnes' ideas of alternate histories are just the simplistic outcomes of wars being won by the other side. (By the way, other reviewers are accusing Barnes of ripping off Philip K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle," but I see that as more of an influence or inspiration. In any case, it's been done better.)

Notwithstanding the completely unchallenging alternate histories, the characters in this novel are flat and contrived, with stereotypical personalities and stilted personal dialogue - that is, when they're not speechifying in nerdy multi-paragraph dissertations on dense concepts. Meanwhile the lackluster protagonist Lyle is little more than a whiny self-obsessed nerd. Then there are the regular plot contrivances, such as the mysterious mastermind who regularly pops up out of nowhere when the other characters are in trouble, and who keeps all the characters active with unlimited wealth and the effortless ability to make things happen anywhere in infinitely multiple worlds. Add to all this Barnes' completely amateurish method of creating suspense, which is to have the character who knows all the answers refuse to explain things to everyone else until a later time, then having that same character go on and on for several pages in a row when the attempted suspense falls apart. I could write a few more paragraphs about all of the story's plot holes, inconsistencies, and loose ends, especially how only the main characters even notice all the drastically altering realities. In closing I must state that John Barnes has written several brilliant and powerful sci-fi novels, and he has a deserved reputation as a rising master of the field. For that reason, he might consider disowning this one. [~doomsdayer520~]

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Strong start fizzles out, May 17, 1999

By A Customer

The book starts out strong, with an intriguing series of puzzles about missing memories and a tense, fast-paced plot--which makes the book's second- and third-act fizzles all the more disappointing. Barnes is at his best in this book setting the scene; worthy of note are his descriptions and characterizations of the artifical-intelligence-controlled vehicles. However, the effective characterization ends there. One progresses through the book without meeting a fully developed or even terribly interesting human or seeming-human character; most of the weak stabs at characterization come in descriptions of personality quirks (Ipwhin's fidgeting) or in cliched, simplistic, and occasionally borderline-offensive terms (Ipwhin's characterization of Billie Beard, herself a one-dimensional stereotype). The book bogs down in the middle with excessive dialogue and theory, which become almost irrelevant--why did I have to know this again?--by the time the final "quest" sequence rolls around. Action yields to incomprehensibility and deflation as the book falls apart in an "I give up" ending. Unanswered questions (e.g., How did all those apparently critical people end up in the same chat room for years? Why are certain members of the team even there?) are balanced out by unneeded information (all the details about the Reichs lead to nothing, for example). All in all, a good idea gone awry.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Competently executed; indifferent result, May 31, 2000

By	joe_n_bloe (Ester AK USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Finity (Mass Market Paperback)

While John Barnes has written a number of simply outstanding books (Mother of Storms, One for the Morning Glory), this Pohl-esque entry into the alternate worlds genre isn't one of them.

Finity gets off to a good start. The (first-person) narrator speaks in stilted, self-centered prose like, perhaps, a character from a R.A. Lafferty novel. It becomes apparent, after a while, that he inhabits a world that seems to have a changing past. Not only that but this changing past seems to be different for everyone. And then there is the matter of the United States having gone missing.

It's an interesting premise until it turns into a road trip. Then the story begins leaking steam. One of the characters turns out to be a red herring. (Or something very much like a red herring.) People you've just begun to know turn out to be expendable or not around for all that long for other reasons.

The mess is polished off with a couple of dream sequences that might have been adapted from the rendezvous of Picard and Kirk (well, not really, but ...). Quirks of physics and mathematics explain everything away.

Overall, underwhelming. Not a bad book to be stuck on an airplane with (which is where I read most of it) but there's better reading to be had. Much of it, in fact, with Barnes's own name on it!